Strawberry Gashes
by karebear
Summary: "It's no longer a specific kind of hurt. It's just an everything kind of pain, with dulled-out edges that make the whole thing hard to describe. Like what the morphling did in the beginning, but it's just life doing it now. Life and time." Gale tries to figure out why Madge tried to help him. Why does anybody bother to help anybody, when the world is burning down?


"What the hell is wrong with you?" Gale growls, before Madge has even gotten the door all the way open. She flinches away from the pure anger lacing his tone. She just shrugs, not trusting herself to answer. What the hell is he even doing here anyway? Surely he didn't come just to yell at her.

She rubs her hand over her face and peeks out between her fingers, mumbling something half-hearted about curfew and his presence here being dangerous. Gale shoots her a poisonous glare. "Didn't know you were so concerned," he spits.

This time, she does look up. She holds his gaze, and the hardness in his eyes softens, just a bit. Even if it only turns into confusion.

She can feel her cheeks heating up, so she looks down again, at the poured concrete steps that are the closest District Twelve will ever come to the vaunted marble entryways that lead to mayor's houses in other districts. She's glad she doesn't live in a place that gets shown on TV. The fact that nobody cares is enough to protect them. For now, anyway. She knows damn well that it's a dangerous edge they walk along, that they're going to be pushed off that cliff sooner rather than later no matter what they do.

She pushes her way through the half open door and stands awkwardly there on the top step that isn't really built for one person to loiter, and definitely not two. This entryway is built for people to quickly move in or out, yet Gale is just _standing _there. So she does too.

She shivers in the winter cold - despite the fact that she's wearing a heavy coat, and Gale isn't. She knows she's one of the few that can afford clothing enough to stay warm, and it makes her feel even more guilty. Her mind wanders to all these side observations and she _knows _she's doing it, because she doesn't want to face the reality of the situation. At least she's functional. Mostly. Her mother can't handle the truth of District Twelve either, so she's locked in her room, screaming and throwing things because _somebody_ stole all her morphling.

Madge leans against the closed front door and tries to pretend she's not studying Gale, trying to figure out if he's okay. The last time she saw him, he was almost dead. _What the hell is he doing here? _

He smiles at her, but it's a sick, sardonic grin. "You _know_ they're right," he sneers. "The strawberries were nowhere near that good."

She knows what people think, what Haymitch has actually _said_. Madge doesn't care what people think about her, she never has, but the false rumors about some kind of illicit romance between her and Gale bothers her, because she knows that they are both being watched. Gale is, because he's a criminal, even though she can't think of him that way. And she is, because of her close proximity to her father, despite the fact that their physical nearness only accentuates their pointed ignorance of each other's existence and activities. She _hates _her dad and his complete unwillingness to do anything to help the people he's supposed to be the leader of. He gives the Capitol everything they ask for; he lets them do whatever they want. Even...

"Hey. Madge." She stops short, breathing heavily, as Gale's fingers wrapped tightly around her arm pull her back to reality. "Are you okay?" he asks.

She shivers with more than the cold as his voice washes over her. She doesn't want to remember that she heard him screaming, hoarse and desperate, she heard his whimpering cries, and the memory of all that blood still makes her dizzy, it makes her feel like she wants to vomit. She doesn't even know how to broach that topic with Gale though. She doesn't want to tell him that she heard him crying. She doesn't even know how much he remembers. She hopes it's not a lot. So she shakes her head, and at the same time, she mutters that she's fine.

That same grim, sarcastic smile returns to Gale's face. Well, she supposes he probably knows something about that particular lie. He is _so damn close _to her. She can't even think straight. She hasn't slept in what feels like days. Not since things suddenly got a whole lot more dangerous. Quiet and loud, both, depending on which particular version of normalcy she can't grasp onto.

"Gale, stop!" she snaps. "Why are you even _here_?"

Gale winces as her voice suddenly pierces the silent air. Her pain is so obvious that it hurts him, which doesn't even makes sense, so he just pretends that he's reacting to the lashes that still hurt. It's not a complete lie, but he's gotten well acquainted to different kinds of pain lately, and his physical wounds no longer feel like a specific kind of hurt. It's just an everything kind of pain, a constant presence. He's gotten used to it, to the point where it doesn't seem worth commenting on, not really. It's intense if he thinks about it, but it's got dulled-out edges that make the whole thing hard to describe. Like what the morphling did in the beginning, but it's just life doing it now. Life and time.

Right now, his head hurts more than his back does. And so does his stomach, which makes sense when he realizes that he can't remember the last time he ate, and trying to remember just makes his head hurt even more, so he just figures 'sometime yesterday,' and moves on. "I just wanted to say thank you, I guess," he mutters, trying to answer Madge's question even though he doesn't actually _know _the answer, or at least he can't put it into any kind of words that make sense or don't sound completely lame. He's lonely. And afraid of the dark. And he just _hurts,_ a lot. His fingers clench involuntarily into a fist, and he blows out his breaths in short puffs of air that he can actually _see_, in the winter cold. He jerks away when he feels the touch of Madge's fingers brushing up his goosebump-covered arm.

"You're freezing," she observes. Her voice is filled with so much concern that it makes his stomach hurt even _more_.

"I'm fine," he insists, repeating her lie.

"Come inside."

He regards her with a steady glare, but she's already gotten up and is shoving open the heavy front door of her house, with its multiple locks, leading into a front hallway that feels bigger than his whole house, far away in the Seam. Everything is clean and perfect and it makes him feel smaller and even more angry. He scowls at the paintings on the walls - all blue and green swirls with yellow spots of light mixed in, they remind him of the woods, somehow, though he can pick out no specific shapes.

"My mom did those," Madge whispers. Her words are quickly swallowed by the oppressive quiet. And that oppressive quiet is quickly broken by the sound of... well... something breaking.

"Is she... okay?" Gale asks, just as softly.

"She is if you are," Madge tells him pointedly.

Gale can only grunt. "So why'd you do it?" he asks. He doesn't look at her. He stares at the pretty painting and scuffs his coal-dust covered boots over the spotless floor tiles, because he can.

Madge almost laughs at the absurdity of the question, coming as it does at the base of the stairs leading up to her family's bedrooms, where Gale has never been, with a part of her imagining what it would be like if she could bring him up there, into her world. "You have to _ask?_" she whispers.

Gale raises an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"You were hurt and I could help," Madge mumbles. "I couldn't _not_."

"That's all there is to it?"

"Yes. No. I don't know."

"That does cover all the options."

Above them, there is more shattering glass, and screaming. "I am _so _with her, sometimes," Madge admits.

"Yeah, me too," Gale says quietly.

There it is again, that anger, so raw and exposed. He can't keep it contained. How could he? How can any of them? There is so much to be angry at, so many things lining up to kill them that suicidal rages aren't even the surest thing on a long list. The upstairs bedrooms are quiet again. Madge grabs Gale's hand before she loses her nerve, and forces herself to look him in the eye, really _look_. She never has before, not in all the years she's been friends with Katniss Everdeen, not since she was a little kid lurking on these very same stairs, straining to listen as a starving Seam boy negotiated prices with her father, for illegal produce, and _won_. Gale's eyes flash with fire, and something stirs inside her belly, a kindling heat. She inches closer to him, so close that their bodies are practically crushed up against each other. Gale catches her with practiced ease. His strong, callused fingers are hot against her skin. He studies her, that frown of confusion still wrinkling his features, making him seem far older than she knows he is. "The Peacekeepers are assholes," he says simply. "That is not actually your fault."

"He almost killed you."

"Still not your problem."

"Gale..."

"What the hell do you want from me, Madge? I'm over it!"

"You're not, you know."

Gale crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the mayor's pristine wall, wincing only slightly as his still-raw rounds hit that unforgiving solid surface. If Madge sees it, she pretends she doesn't. "We're not talking about the whipping anymore, are we?" he asks, with guarded, narrowed eyes.

"There's lots of reasons to use morphling," Madge breathes.

"You think that's what I want?"

"No." She answers right away, with startling vehemence. But she knows she's right. Gale is a hell of a lot stronger than her mother. He won't run away, he won't kill his pain with drugs. He's _here _because he's mad at her for even suggesting he might want to.

"She doesn't love you, you know," she tells him, because if there's one thing Madge is good at it's watching and listening to people who have forgotten she is even there. Or who talk to her because there's no one else around to listen.

"Your mother?"

"Katniss." Madge clarifies, neither taking the bait of his joke nor apologizing for the random shifts in her conversational topics.

Gale sighs, then sits down on the bottom step. Unlike the one outside, this one is at least cared for, smooth hardwood that feels slippery under his fingers. He sinks, more than sits. He sprawls his tall, muscular body out far more comfortably than should be possible in such a confined space. "I know," he replies. "I'm over that too."

"Did you love her?" Madge probes. She knows it's none of her business. She knows she shouldn't even ask. But she can't help herself.

Gale shakes his head. "Nah. Not like that."

"Not ever?"

He shakes his head again, more slowly this time. "Not anymore."


End file.
